I’m a suburban Chicago girl who left behind the brutal winters of the Windy City three decades ago for the warmer (although, at times, tornadic) climate of Missouri, where I live with my husband and three daughters. I love to explore the Ozarks (and beyond) – and muse about my discoveries – on my blog JoplinMOLife.com.

On this site, I write about my travels outside of Joplin as well as my explorations in other areas of my life. I’m a certified Integrative Health Practitioner, Level 1, who is passionate about exploring wellness tools and practices that we can incorporate into our lives in order to live them to the fullest. So I’m constantly learning new things and then writing about my experiences with them.

I’m also fascinated by the spiritual and energetic aspects of this world – the things that we don’t have many answers to and are still exploring. This fascination led me down a path to study Reiki, and I received my Reiki Master certification in 2017. You’ll find some posts on here about my experiences in the realm of the explainable world. I don’t have the answers about the mystical world, but I certainly have a lot of questions.

Sometimes, during quiet moments of the day, I find myself musing about life: parenting, marriage, friendship – and connection. I created this blog as a home for the thoughts that pop into my head at these times. It’s therapy for me, and I hope that some bit of it resonates with you, too.

Welcome.

In case you are wondering, here’s how you pronounce Sempetrean: semp-eh-tree-an. See? Easy! Isn’t it more fun to say than Smith?